GM test results from The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB)

The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has re-tested 4 popular maize milled products as well as 16 baby and breakfast cereals containing maize and/or soya ingredients in order to gauge the extent to which food producers are responding to consumer pressure, The latest results reveal that the four food companies that control our maize milled market—Premier, Tiger Brands, Foodcorp and Pioneer—remain intransigent and are determined to force feed South African consumers with risky GM maize. The re-test results show an overall increase in the percentage of GM maize in the popular maize brands. The average amount of GM maize in a packet of maize meal is now 80%.

With regard to the baby cereals market, the ACB tested 2 products, Tiger Brand’s Purity Nutripak and Nestle’s Cerelac Maize and found that these contain very low levels of GM maize. The test results of the 14 processed breakfast cereals vary considerably. While popular brands such as Pronutro Wheatfree, Nestle Milo and Cheerios all showed very low percentages of GM maize low enough not to trigger required labelling of 5% GM content‹others, such as Bokomo Oatees and Tiger Brand Jungle Ultra, still contain high levels of GM ingredients. However, 8 brands of corn flakes were tested and showed either no GM content or unquantifiable GM or very low levels that would not trigger labelling.